


A Revived Hope

by Leraiv_Snape



Series: Family Ties [1]
Category: Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Darth Vader finds his children, Gen, Parent Darth Vader, Protective Darth Vader, Skywalker Family Drama (Star Wars)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-04
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:13:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27875881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leraiv_Snape/pseuds/Leraiv_Snape
Summary: Vader comes out of hyperspace on the heels of the Tantive IV and senses the Force both from the ship and from Tatooine below.  He investigates, and discovers a lot more than he bargained for.
Relationships: Leia Organa & Darth Vader, Leia Organa & Luke Skywalker, Luke Skywalker & Darth Vader, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Darth Vader, Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker
Series: Family Ties [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2040985
Comments: 26
Kudos: 250





	1. A Revived Hope: Part I

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first in a series of stories where Vader finds his children. It is inspired by several works I've read of different short fics where Vader finds Luke or Leia, but I haven't seen one where he goes for both. This will vary wildly with fics that takes place just after their birth to the twins' adulthood. This first one takes place at the very beginning of A New Hope. Enjoy!

A Revived Hope: Part I 

The Force engulfed him.

Coming out of hyperspace on the heels of Alderaan’s _Tantive IV_ , traitors and stolen plans just meters from his grasp, it drenched him. Blinded him. Surrounded him. 

But this was not the rich, deep, enticing call of the Dark. Not the thunderous aftermath of bloodlust roaring in his veins, rejoicing in the slaughter of the battle-hardened rebels who sought the keys to the Emperor’s unnecessary terror. Not the deliciously addictive embrace of power-generated-by-fear.

The song plundering through him was one of life emergent, of strength, the joy of promises fulfilled and a brilliant, blinding Light.

Never, not as a boy racing pods, not as a Padawan meditating and touching each strand of the Force wrapped through every youngling in the Temple, not as the Emperor’s apprentice reveling in the destructive beauty of the raw power of his fury…

…never had he felt this. Never had the Force resounded in him until he felt as if metal, armor, circuitry and what was left of flesh and bone and breath had all evaporated to permit the purity of life that created and bound the Force to move through him unhindered. 

In his abrupt, unintended immersion, two presences, two oceans of power, brushed his own. 

A few hundred meters of space was all that separated him from one that rose in his awareness like the sunrise on a world that belonged in the memories of another man. Its familiar foundation glowed as a blazing passion for justice, sending streaks of determination and resilience into the Force. 

But if the one on the Tantive IV was a sunrise, the one on the planet below blazed with the full brilliance of a new-born star. Light strobed from Tatooine like a beacon, like a flare. Both Vader and the sunrise-source felt it, touched it, marveled at it.

Both sang a song of homecoming – and though they were Light to his Shadow, Vader knew he was included in their harmony. Images that he had not permitted to cross his mind for two decades spilled forth. The bed they had shared. Her belly round and vibrant under his hands—

_“It’s going to be a boy, Ani!”_

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_“When my daughter is born, you’ll see how beautiful she is. Just like her—”_

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A third ocean met the vast shore of his expanded Force presence, and Vader felt a moment’s uncharacteristic gratitude for wrenching him out of a dead man’s recollections. Until he recognized it. This signature was not new. Nor was it bright, shining in its novelty like the others. It did not have their power, though it felt a great deal more controlled. It was frayed and old and tired and _terrified_. And awfully, treacherously, familiar.

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_Kenobi._

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Burning, unmitigated rage surged, pulling him back into the body his old master’s treachery had banished him to, shutting off the overwhelming essences in the Force that had briefly conquered the Sith’s mind and body. Vader found himself once more standing on the bridge of his Star Destroyer, braced as if expecting an impact, his puzzled captain in front of him, mouth open mid-question. The Dark Lord lifted a finger, closing off most of the man’s air. Not enough to kill him, just enough to make him gasp and fall still as his labored breathing filled the suddenly-silent bridge. 

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“Prepare my shuttle for a planet landing. Use our tractor beam on that ship – take _every one_ of the Rebels alive and unharmed.” He tore his gaze from the planet below to look at the captain as he released the stress on the man’s windpipe. The officer sucked in a deep breath, but snapped to attention instead of collapsing on the nearest console. “If so much as a single captive is hurt, you will answer personally for your failures, Captain.” The man nodded shortly and Vader ignored his subordinate’s spike of nervousness as he swept from the bridge. 

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It rankled that he could not take the time to identify the origin of the _Tantive IV’s_ power immediately, but the source on the planet had to be tracked now. Kenobi was there. He had doubtless been shielding the focal point of that enormous potential. 

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The Sith Lord grimly acknowledged that the Jedi’s choice was a clever one. Vader had successfully avoided Tatooine for over twenty years. Still – it was a testament to his one-time friend and master’s prowess that this brilliance had remained masked. Vader and his Inquisitors were rigorous in the pursuit of their duties – the source of the Light below should have been noticed long ago. 

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It hardly mattered. He had found them now, and the call was so strong, so pervasive, that he would not lose his sense of it again. Vader did not smile beneath his mask. The years and their scars had left their mark such that the Dark Lord’s muscles no longer remembered how. But a deep, burning satisfaction took up residence under his breastbone. His power curled around it, humming darkly, anticipating his revenge. 

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Kenobi. The master he had not destroyed on Mustafar, nor during the Purges, nor in the nearly two decades since. One of the very few to elude him. 

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Now...now his game was up. The Force was truly with Vader and the Empire today – not only would Kenobi meet his end, but his delayed reckoning offered a worthy recompense: a powerful Force-sensitive that the old man surely coveted as an apprentice. 

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Vader would take this one for himself. Kenobi’s failure would be complete as the old man’s hoped-for resurrection of the corrupt Jedi path turned at the Sith Lord’s hand and catapulted them both to glory. 

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**********

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Darkness exploded in his awareness. Bent over the small garden that he had tended for nineteen sand-blasting Tatooine summers, Ben Kenobi gasped aloud in the silent afternoon as the Force writhed around him.

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Luke’s brightness touched the edges of a dimmer, but no less supple, signature. Even as Ben reached to draw the Force as a block between the young man’s power and the galaxy that would tear itself apart to find him, a veil of crimson and shadow darkened his senses. 

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Blindly fumbling behind him, he collapsed on an ancient rock retaining wall, his instincts grasping the sum of reality while his mind struggled to order the knowledge into coherent thought. Too late...they had failed...he could feel Vader’s presence, a Dark, cold nova spewing constant, tireless tendrils into the Force, even now caressing the edges of Luke’s light, greedily sucking in his presence. 

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_“Never can he learn of them, Obi-Wan. Trained, they must not be. Not until they are old enough to defend themselves.”_

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_“Master Yoda, Anakin would have wanted...the children might…”_

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_“Hope, do you, as Senator Amidala did, that good still lives in Vader? That Skywalker lives?”_ Yoda’s voice cracked across the years, as unyielding in Obi-Wan’s memory as it had been on the day the twins were born. _“Gone, is your apprentice, Obi-Wan. If we wish the galaxy to follow, give him the children, we will.”_

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How had his shield been breached? The older Jedi had carefully planned for the day that he would speak to Luke of his heritage and thereby initiate the young man’s true introduction to the Force. Shielding himself was to be his first lesson. But there was no chance that anything on Tatooine should have wreaked such havoc on the block Ben had maintained for the whole of Luke’s childhood.

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The Force that swirled so readily around him already knew the answer. _Leia Organa_. He closed tired eyes, reached for the softer splash of Light only just visible in Luke’s shade. It had to be the princess. Like called to like, the Force binding that which had been separated at birth in the presence of their sire. 

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Organa knew better! Ben had travelled to Alderaan only twice in the years following Padmé’s death, simply to familiarize himself with Leia’s unique imprint in the Force, that he might recognize her if ever necessary. But the twins had been separated precisely for this reason! They were the children of the most powerful Jedi to have ever been born. Their own significant power had been clear from birth. One might be masked, but never two if they were together. They had been fortunate that Leia’s power was hidden by the vibrant life of Alderaan itself. But the sole demand Obi-Wan had made of Organa all those years ago was that she was never to come close to Tatooine for any reason. Never accidentally meet Luke as they grew up. They had never been sure of what the consequences might be, and now the older man knew they were going to find out under the worst possible conditions.

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She was too close. Why? Who had allowed her to come out of hyperspace over Tatooine, trailing _Vader?_

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He could hear the Emperor’s laughter echoing coldly across the years.

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No time for inaction. The general still within the aging hermit shoved his whirling thoughts aside and propelled him to his feet. He was running for his speeder, far more gracefully than his age should allow. Vader had not yet landed. The princess was surely lost, as was her valuable cargo that had attracted the Dark Lord’s attention, but Luke might yet be saved. Might be retrieved and successfully re-hidden. 

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As he kicked the speeder into gear, urging it well past the speed the aged engine alone could summon, Ben could only hope there was time to hide Owen and Beru as well.

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**********

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Luke shaded his eyes as he stared over the farm’s vaporators, staring into the midday sky. There was…something…out there. It was something well beyond his eyes’ capacity to see, but he could feel it coming closer, swooping toward him.

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It was not unlike the krayt dragon that had nearly snatched him at eight. The dull, heavy feeling of being prey, of being hunted...but this felt more focused, more deliberate. A krayt dragon attacked to feed or to protect. There was no malice in the animal, just instinct. 

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The something coming now was coiled cold Darkness, a predator as surely as the dragons were. But it was not operating on instinct. It was hunting him, specifically, and it had a reason. 

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His ability to feel others, to understand hidden motivations, to know things he should not have known (like when his aunt hadn’t been paying attention and the fruit slicer had nearly taken her finger while he and his uncle were in the workshop), was a talent he kept to himself since he was old enough to know that others did not have this additional sense. Fixer and his gang had always been adamant about his “freakishness”, so he had learned to disguise it and the insight it granted him.

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But never ignore it. It was never wrong.

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And as surely as he had known he could not let the krayt’s claws touch him as a child, he knew this someone could not be allowed to find him.

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“We have to go,” he thundered down the stairs into his aunt’s kitchen. Beru lifted her eyes in surprise. 

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“Luke?”

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“Something’s out there.”

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“Sandpeople?” she asked fearfully, picking up her nephew’s seriousness.

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“No.” Luke ran a hand through his hair, experimentally prodding the feeling that was rapidly growing more insistent, more sure. It was not Sandpeople. The Tuskens were an unpleasant lot to share Tatooine with, but this was...more powerful. More focused. More dangerous. 

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“Then what?”

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“I don’t know. But it’s bad. We don’t want to be here when it arrives.”

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Luke watched his aunt study him for a few seconds more, his frustration multiplying. Just as he opened his mouth to shout, she nodded decisively.

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“Let’s go. Find your uncle. He should be at the shop.”

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Luke sprinted back up the sand-blown stairs and shot over to the workshop. His uncle was doubtless fiddling with the droid that had broken down three days ago. They had been hoping to speak to the Jawas in the next few days – the traders’ sandcrawler was due soon and they often had a passable selection of droids – but Luke _knew_ that option was out now, in the way that he occasionally _knew_ things.

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“Uncle Owen!” he called as he hurtled into the shop. 

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“Luke? Good. I need you to hand me that—”

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“We have to leave. Now.”

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His uncle’s eyes flashed to his, automatic indignation flaring in the bullish set to his shoulders – only to pause as he took in his nephew’s stance, the clear authority in his tone. 

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Owen had had little access to the holovids during the Clone Wars, but right now, Luke Skywalker looked exactly like his father had on those vids. Commanding. Assured. Powerful.

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It was an illusion and it lasted but a moment as he reached for his ancient hunting blaster. “Sandpeople?”

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“No. Worse, I think.” Luke’s eyes flicked ceiling-ward – _skyward_ , Owen realized with a cold chill down his spine – and his nephew shivered violently. “It’s closer. They’re coming fast.”

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_Time’s run out._

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Owen tossed the blaster to Luke. The youth caught it one-handed in surprise. “Get your aunt. Take the speeder. Head for the Wastes. Find Ben Kenobi.”

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There wasn’t time to resent the old wizard, to wish that he and Beru hadn’t been burdened with the son of a powerful Jedi nineteen years ago. They had been willing to take the boy and love him as he grew. The understanding that their lives would be forfeit for harboring the son of a Jedi – especially the son of that Jedi – had dawned gradually and too late. 

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And even if they’d known the risks, they would have said yes anyway. Family was family. 

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“Uncle Owen…you have to come with us!” Luke cried.

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“There are things you don’t know about yourself, Luke. About your father. Your family. Your aunt can tell you some, Ben Kenobi should know a lot more. But I know—” he pulled out a much newer blaster that Luke had never seen before. This weapon was not for hunting womp rats or scaring off dragons and sandpeople. This was a weapon banned from civilian hands. An Imperial-grade Stormtrooper blaster. A people-killer. “—that you have to get away. You cannot let the Empire take you, Luke. Never.”

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“The _Empire?_ ” he gaped at his uncle before grasping the most important thing. “You can’t stay here!”

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“Someone has to slow them down,” Owen said gruffly. “Give you time to get out of here. We’ve known for awhile it might come to this.”

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Luke could only stare at his uncle and guardian, the man whose occasional hard words and ever-demanding work he had grown up resenting. The man calmly planning on laying down his life to protect him and saying that he’d known this day could come.

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“Uncle Owen—”

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“Go!” the older man commanded harshly, checking the charge on his blaster. “Get out of here before they arrive!”

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The screech of a speeder bike screaming to a halt shot both men into action. “Stay here!” Owen barked, but Luke was closer to the exit and darted out, blaster in hand and already aiming in the general direction of the speeder—

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—it wasn’t the predator. He was barely aware of lowering the blaster.

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“Ben Kenobi?” 

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“Young Luke,” the older man glanced past him, to where his uncle had hurried out behind him. “I have come to hide him. You and Beru must leave as well.”

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“That bad?” Owen asked grimly. 

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“Worse,” Ben said shortly. “It is not just stormtroopers the Empire is sending.”

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Luke turned to his uncle as the farmer paled at this incomprehensible exchange. 

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“Head to Beru’s parents. Tell them to pack what they can and move on again. The Empire will follow as long as they think Luke travels with you. I will take Luke elsewhere. Probably offworld. Hopefully that will be enough to lead them away after they find this place abandoned.”

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“I’m not sure—” Owen began.

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“There is no other option, Owen Lars. You know who his father was. You know what the Emperor would do to get his hands on another Skywalker.” 

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Luke opened his mouth, dying to ask one of the million questions suddenly tumbling for space on his tongue, but Ben gestured to him sharply. “Jump on, Luke.”

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“But I—”

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“There is no time for goodbyes,” Ben said quietly, and a feeling shivered across Luke’s skin, one of sorrow and of a deep, unnerving dejá vu. 

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_Now go, and don’t look back._

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_A woman with sad, kind dark eyes, the uncertainty of a lonely future..._

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“You can contact them once we’re all safe. Come!”

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“Go!” Owen cried from behind him, gesturing towards Ben’s speeder with his Imperial firearm. “We will speak to you soon, Luke.”

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Luke cast a glance at the house, where his aunt still lingered. “I will tell her. You have to go!”

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“As long as you stay, you endanger them,” Ben added quietly. “It is you he is coming for.”

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A chill swept Luke’s spine from the nape of his neck to his tailbone and he shuddered violently under the glare of the suns. The Dark ocean surged against him, triumph foaming in its touch. It was close. He doubted they had ten minutes. 

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He raced for the speeder, jumped on behind the older man and grabbed a fistful of robe, thighs squeezing the seat only meant for one to keep himself steady. 

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His heart and mind were full, but his tongue was suddenly leaden. What could he possibly say in the seconds Ben was swinging the speeder about to go deep into the Wastes? _Take care of the vaporators, the Hutt water tax is due soon? Please don’t send me away with this wizard I hardly know? You’re scaring me, what is it that frightens you? Will I ever see you again? Who was my father, really? Why would the Emperor be interested in me? Goodbye? Thank you? I love you?_

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So it was that they were well beyond the range of shouting by the time Luke realized that the ride was smoother than it had any right to be and the water stinging his eyes was tears.

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__**********_ _

Princess Leia Organa of Alderaan gritted her teeth against the unexpected onslaught.

The Imperial boarding party was nothing out of the ordinary. But the surge of the Dark, of deep, bone-cold delight that stemmed from hunting and pouncing and killing, crawled over her skin, closer than it had ever been.

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_Vader._ It had to be the Sith Lord. Her adoptive father had made it clear that the stories of Jedi and Sith and the Force were no mere legends and had no place alongside her mythology books spanning a dozen worlds. Jedi and Sith were real. The Emperor himself was one of the dreaded users of the Dark Side, as was his much-feared Second. 

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He had told her at twelve that she, too, had been gifted with sensitivity to the Force, and that she had to hide her talent. The Emperor’s Inquisitors were a ferocious and unforgiving task force.

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_“I do not wish to frighten you, Leia, but you must learn to lock down your mind. I would not have the Inquisitors take you.”_

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_“Why would they?” she asked._

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_“The Emperor is very...careful...about who gets to use the Force. Most of us cannot, and so it is a moot point. But for those who can...he is not keen to share.”_

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Even at twelve, Leia had thought that attitude particularly short-sighted and selfish. But she had learned to shield her mind at her father’s request and second-hand instructions. She had come to regard the Force mostly as a highly advanced form of intuition – she almost always knew when she was being lied to, which had led to a few interesting discussions in the Senate already – but aside from that, she mostly ignored the stray sensations that drifted through her consciousness and had assiduously learned to lock them out.

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But Vader’s strength and proximity made locking him out impossible. She had never encountered him in battle, and only distantly seen his entourage on Coruscant a few times. His presence now was...overwhelming. 

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And strangely, disturbingly...familiar. Familiar in the way that a never-before-seen face could feel like the features of an old friend. 

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The absurdity of it helped her focus. Vader was not a friend. Whatever the Force was trying to say, it would have to find a different way to convince her. 

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But if she felt him…could he feel her, too? Had he identified her as a Force sensitive? Would he turn her over to his Inquisitors? 

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She squared her shoulders and ducked down the next corridor. She didn’t have time for this kind of speculation. They had been followed from Scarif, and the plans still had to get to General Kenobi, who – according to her father – was on the forsaken desert planet below. Even if her own life was forfeit, she could ensure that the mission succeeded.

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Her R2-D2 unit trilled at her as she slid between stacks of machinery. “You’ll need to find him, Artoo,” she murmured, inserting the data disk and preparing to record the personal message she had hoped to deliver in person. 

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“General Kenobi. Years ago, you served with my father in the Clone Wars…”

**********

Vader stood alone, boots planted in the sandy dirt, the all-too-familiar wind picking up around him. Sand still got everywhere.

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He ignored the irritating element, his mind loosed in all directions. The sunrise presence still glowed over the planet – his captain was clearly following orders. 

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But the brilliant one had been muted again, and the one he felt most clearly as he stood was the one he most hated. His phantom limbs burned in remembrance and he fed the pain and the rage it summoned to the Dark, letting it increase the range of his search, the Force vibrating across the landscape at his command. 

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He had followed the Force here, only to have another voice strive to be heard. A voice that pressed him to recall this homestead from long ago, to glance to his right, to honor the plain marker placed there—

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Vader ignored the voice and closed his mostly-useless eyes. He did not look around himself. The inhabitants of this place were irrelevant – aside from the one who called to him. If he could not find the one, he would grudgingly seek out the owners and they would pay for their deception. But why waste his time with moisture farmers if he could attain Kenobi’s prize?

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_Kenobi…_ His extended senses found the fresh trail of his enemy. He lifted his hand, gestured, and a speeder bike floated out of his landed shuttle at his command. The old man would still be with the one Vader was seeking, of that much, the Dark Lord was sure. Now that Kenobi knew he was here, he would stick close to his investment.

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_All the better. Find Kenobi, kill him, take his pupil._ His master would be pleased. 

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And he could lay that internal voice – the voice that had insolently spoken twice today – to rest.

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He revved the speeder bike and took off into the gathering dark.

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	2. A Revived Hope: Part II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vader makes an important discovery. Or several.

A Revived Hope: Part II

“Where are we?” Luke asked quietly as Ben braked the speeder next to a sand-worn cliff in the twilight. The youth could make out a small window and a door in the stone, the only distinguishers of a dwelling in the otherwise unforgiving rock face.

“My home, Luke,” Ben answered before vaulting off the speeder bike more gracefully than his age should allow. “Come. I have to collect a few items and then we’ll be off to Mos Eisley.”

_“Probably offworld.”_ Fear surged in Luke. Yes, he’d always wanted to leave Tatooine, dreamed – sometimes so vividly it was like he was re-living a life that was not his own – of flying into space, of defeating thousands of unknown enemies, of being cheered as a hero.

But not like this. Not running from a nameless terror that everyone else seemed to know, with an old hermit he’d met less than a handful of times in his life. 

“Where are we going?” he asked, feeling useless standing in the tiny main room while Ben darted about gathering what he needed, limber and swift despite his age.

“Somewhere I can keep you safe.”

“Safe from _what?_ ” Luke didn’t mean to sound ungrateful or snappish, but these non-explanations would hardly have satisfied a five-year-old, let alone a man of nineteen summers. 

Darkness hovered at the edge of his consciousness, reaching for him. Ben felt it, gasped, half-collapsing against a doorway. “Get on the speeder. You’re going to have to go without me.”

_“What?”_

“Go!” the old man shouted, thrusting out a hand. The door slid open from an invisible touch. “He can sense me, he’ll find us both if you’re with me.” 

Luke stared at him. But it was true. He knew it was true, knew with the same undefined sense he used to pilot through sand storms and hit womp rats unerringly at several hundred meters. 

“Mos Eisley?” he asked faintly.

“Find passage to Alderaan. Tell them you’re the son of Bail Organa. He will pay your way.”

“Bail who?” Luke was trying to assemble this into some order, make his brain comprehend the instructions, but he felt stupid and slow, like he had spent too much time under the suns.

“Organa. Viceroy of Alderaan. Give your name as Luke Lars. Only as Lars,” Ben’s blue eyes met his, fierce in their command. “Do _not_ go by Skywalker. That name is death trap.”

“Why?” Luke pounced. “Uncle Owen said you knew something about my father, he said you could explain—”

“Once I escape him, I will find you. No more questions!” Ben waved a hand at Luke and the youth stumbled out the door as if pushed. 

It was too late. The Dark was upon them. He felt it’s icy tendrils seize in his spirit, and Luke whipped round to see the outline of another speeder approaching. Even in the semi-dark, he could tell that this one was of the finest craftsmanship, and the figure riding it was a behemoth dressed in black, cape sailing straight behind him in the wind.

Luke froze, dread icing his gut and turning his feet to lead. He had seen this man on the Holonet a handful of times, read about him in school, heard half-told tales of brutal magic in the Anchorhead markets before Uncle Owen had smartly pulled him away. 

The source of the Dark greedily reaching for him was Darth Vader.

**********

Triumph roared. With his mask’s enhanced lenses, he could make out a young man standing shell-shocked on a low terrace. Kenobi's presence smothered the landscape, blurring the strength Vader knew lived in the boy. Without bothering to fully stop the speeder, he launched from the bike, hand outstretched to pull his prize to him.

Blue flashed, interrupting the summons, and Vader yanked his own lightsaber free, landing and crashing his blade against his one-time master’s. 

“Go!” Kenobi grunted at the boy. Vader spied an ancient speeder parked haphazardly near the door. A wave of his hand sent it careening into the cliff wall, where it erupted in smoke and fire. Vader felt a surge of fear and fury. The Dark roiled in satisfied response. Kenobi’s apprentice was yet untutored in the Jedi weakness of releasing his emotions into the Force. Excellent. Vader would teach him how to make the Force jump at his command.

“Your apprentice is powerful. One might think you’re trying to make up for something,” Vader taunted.

“Not...my…apprentice,” Kenobi bit back, struggling against Vader’s blade. “I don’t know what you think you feel, _Vader_ , but the boy’s a farmer. Nothing else.”

“He will be much more than that when I’m finished with him,” the Dark Lord promised, matching the next strike with ease. 

“We both know he’s not who you really want,” Kenobi replied breathlessly. “You’ve been waiting twenty years for revenge. Now is your chance. You can take it.”

“On the contrary, old man, you’re just an obstacle I have to clear.” Although, the fact that Vader’s prize had _this_ guardian was truly a gift of the Force. “Albeit one I will enjoy cutting down.” Their sabers clashed once more, Kenobi struggling to defend as the Sith Lord inexorably advanced. Twenty years ago, they had more or less been evenly matched. No longer. Another handful of swings would be the end of the Jedi. 

“Stop!” the youth’s voice shattered through the snarl of their sabers, timid and brave and impossibly young. Vader kept his senses attuned to Kenobi as he paused to glance at the boy. Small build, fair hair, light eyes. Altogether unremarkable, except that he sang in the Force. Or would, once Kenobi and his Force-be-damned block were disposed of.

“If I go with you, will you spare him?” 

Vader tilted his head. “Why would I do that? His kind are a corruption, young one. Consider that your first lesson.”

“He has been kind to me. And to my family,” the boy pressed, even taking a step towards them. Vader focused on him more fully. Something about the boy called to him, a nudge in the Force that urged recognition. He reached, sending the Dark to caress the muted edges of boy’s Force presence. Was this the child of some Jedi he had known? Was he _Kenobi’s_ son? The Force skittered away from the thought, untrue in its specifics, but glancing off the truth. 

“No!” Kenobi cried, and swung his blade, going on the offensive and demanding Vader’s attention. But his one-time master had not wielded a lightsaber on a daily basis since the day he’d left Anakin Skywalker to burn on Mustafar. Whereas Vader led his troops from the front, and his blade was already humming with rebel blood. Kenobi’s attack was almost pathetic. “You _must_ run!”

“You cannot run from me. Kenobi has not told you who you are, what power you possess. I will ensure you reach your potential.” Vader could sense the boy’s interest flaring, and gloated at Kenobi’s crumbling visage. The old hermit no doubt had some clever plan to tell the boy at the perfect moment, but questions left to prey on the unsuspecting mind had devastating consequences. It was a lesser-told sentiment, but curiosity could just as easily lead to the Dark as to the Light. 

“I will come with you willingly,” the boy took another step towards the locked combatants. Another few and he would be within the reach of Vader’s sword arm. The boy was brave, or else suicidal. Or perhaps just unaware of Vader’s fearsome reputation. “If you let him live.”

The Dark Lord considered the aged man on the other side of the lightsaber. The years and Tatooine’s climate had not been kind to the man he had spent his childhood calling master. Death might even now be considered a kindness. Still, Darkness howled in his blood. This was the man who had shorn him of three limbs and left him to die next to a flaming pit. The excruciating confines of his suit for twenty years were Kenobi’s fault. Not to mention the other losses he laid at the other man’s feet, the loss of _her_ , of his _child…_

The Dark seethed, pushing him to end it, to sate his need for vengeance. 

But the emotional agony dripping from the old Jedi fed the shadow, soothing it as it lapped up his misery. Take the boy. Leave Kenobi alive, gutted by his failure, as Vader had been hollowed by his. After all, it was at the old man’s hands that the Sith himself had learned there were things worse than death. Kenobi had not spared him. And the man who’d once been the center of his universe was no threat.

He stepped back, deactivating his lightsaber. “You have a deal.”

“No, you don’t! He will _not_ be going with you!” The hermit swung at him again, desperate, and Vader flicked his hand, sending his unreleased fury down his circuits and out his fingertips. Kenobi flew backwards, struck the cliff, and collapsed.

“I said let him live!” the youth’s voice quavered, but the steadfastness of courage remained. Vader was pleased. The weak could not successfully embrace the Dark. The Dark Lord waved a negligent hand.

“He is alive. You should be able to sense his life force.” The boy hesitated, took all of perhaps five seconds clearly trying to do just that, failed, and dashed to the old man’s side to check his pulse. He found one, as Vader knew he would. He gave the boy no further time to discover anything else. He was Vader’s now, his apprentice-to-be, and the sooner he learned to let go of sentiment, the better. 

“Come,” he pulled the youth to his feet, neither rough nor especially gentle. When the boy made to pull away, Vader tightened his grip. “Do you have a name?”

The boy swallowed, stopped trying to free himself. “Luke Lars.”

_Luke Lars_. A deceptively unassuming name for a deceptively unassuming boy. It was likely not his real name.

But that was also likely to be of little consequence. It would be his only for as long as it took him to take his Sith title.

**********

Luke shifted nervously in the seat on the shuttle where Vader had deposited him. His mind had been more or less a blank, running on automatic, since he’d heard himself say: 

_“I will come with you willingly if you let him live.”_ He didn’t know why he’d offered. He’d heard enough tales of the Emperor’s primary enforcer, the Supreme Commander of the Imperial Navy, to fear him. Standing in his presence, the monster swathed in black scared him. The Darkness warping the air around him, as if Vader were a tiny, dense black hole swallowing all light, terrified him.

But there was something about him. His presence, frozen and sharp as it was, spoke to Luke. Called to him. It was not safe, it did not lessen the danger Vader represented, either to the galaxy or, his Force intuition whispered, to himself personally. But it was _important._ Important enough to roll the dice and gamble himself for Ben’s life. 

So here he was, strapping himself into the back of a shuttle with now-shaking hands as his brain finally caught up to the implications of his choice. _“You know what the Emperor would do to get his hands on another Skywalker.”_

Above all things, he was just going to have to make sure that, whatever they wanted with him, they never knew that they’d caught another Skywalker.

*********

“Princess Leia Organa, Senator for Alderaan,” she announced herself to the deck commander before her escort could say anything. The lieutenant guarding her scowled, but said nothing. They had no evidence against her yet, and she knew they would be cautious with a member of the Imperial Senate. Or rather, she hoped. The fact that she was now standing on the same Death Star that had just blown half of Scarif to pieces was not lost on her. “The Imperial Senate will not sit still for this. When they hear you’ve attacked a diplomatic transport—”

“That’s enough, Your Highness,” her escort cut her off sharply before addressing the deck commander. “This entire band of rebels was intercepted by Lord Vader. He’s certain she’s one of them.” 

The deck commander studied her with thinly-veiled contempt. “Abusing a senate position to promote a violently disruptive political group is treason, Your Highness.”

She drew herself up, squaring her shoulders. She knew that when she pitched her voice just so, she could make Imperial loyalists very uncomfortable. Occasionally, she’d managed to change their minds. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m a member of the Imperial Senate on a diplomatic mission to Alderaan.”

The deck officer actually blinked, and a bead of sweat trickled down one of his military-grade sideburns. But the lieutenant was having none of it. “This ship escaped orbit around Scarif as Lord Vader boarded a Rebel vessel. She is one of them. I recommend she be placed in the detention block with the rest of the Rebel scum.”

The deck officer started to nod, noticed the lieutenant’s stripes, and frowned at him. “While your recommendation is duly noted, _Lieutenant_ , the Senator will be placed under guard here. We have reason to believe that Lord Vader is due shortly. I’m sure he will want to see to the Senator himself.”

The lieutenant’s thin mouth spoke of his disagreement, but he said nothing. As he clicked his heels and strode back to the prisoner transport that had brought him and their valuable prize aboard, the deck commander turned to the princess. “Stormtroopers!” he barked. A contingent of six instantly jogged up.

“Guard the prisoner. If she tries anything stupid, stun her.”

Leia remained still in her handcuffs as the troopers crowded around her, leaving themselves just enough room to swiftly draw arms if she moved. Briefly, she entertained the notion of deliberately getting them to stun her. 

Vader’s Darkness was distant now, far enough that she could not feel the cold, grasping edges of his presence. She did not relish him coming closer. 

She quashed the unseemly fear. She was a princess and a senator. She would stand before Darth Vader with the dignity of her people and her office. Anything less was an insult to her father and the people who had died for the data stored in a little Artoo unit. 

She hoped the droid had found General Kenobi.

**********

Vader maneuvered the shuttle to dock in the Death Star’s landing bay, the irritation the technological terror usually caused him dismissed in the face of greater considerations. Let Tarkin think he held the ultimate destructive power in the universe. Anyone who could use the Force knew better.

Behind him, the boy, now too far from Tatooine for Kenobi’s shielding to have any effect, once again shone like a star in the Force, his Light nearly blinding. It would be a powerful thing indeed to subjugate that Light to Darkness, to teach Lars how to tap the true reaches of his power. 

An apprentice. That _he_ might be the Master. 

The shuttle set down gently and he rose. “Come, young one,” he commanded, gesturing for Lars to follow him. The youth unbuckled slowly, and Vader could feel his hesitation. He had not been permitted out of the shuttle on the Star Destroyer that had brought them here. Vader had instead set a guard about the craft, knowing they would use it to transfer to the Death Star. Lars would be his apprentice, but a Sith apprentice had to earn the privileges they were granted, free range of a Star Destroyer amongst them. 

Vader pulled the reluctant youth fully upright with a gesture. Lars shot him an affronted look, which he did not acknowledge. The boy would be better served to learn quickly that when the Dark Lord commanded him, he expected swift obedience. 

Vader strode down the ramp, felt Lars following him, felt the youth’s trepidation growing as he took in the size of the hangar bay and the rows upon rows of stormtroopers and officers arrayed to greet them. The station’s military commander – a hasty appointment in the aftermath of Director Krennick’s demise on Scarif a bare thirty-six hours ago – was standing at nervous attention in front of him. Tarkin had not troubled himself to descend from the station’s command center, and Vader could not pretend to care. The Grand Moff’s ambitions and his constant jockeying for position bored the Sith, as did the Emperor’s willingness to indulge Tarkin’s obsequiousness. 

A moment later, he was grateful for the Moff’s arrogance and his absence. As the Death Star’s top officer mouthed meaningless pleasantries and words of welcome, the hangar commander moved forward with a tiny figure in white, commanding the Dark Lord’s attention. Vader only just registered the white robes defining Alderaan’s young senator before the presence he had glimpsed on the _Tantive IV_ surged in his consciousness, battling for space in the glow of Lars’ brilliance.

_She is the source, he realized._ The boy behind him halted, and Vader absorbed Lars’ curiosity as he, too, felt the touch of the princess’ Force signature. It would be the Sith’s last conscious realization for some minutes. 

“Darth Vader,” her voice was coldly composed as she cut across the commander’s formalities. “Only you would be so bold.”

He knew that carefully modulated tone. He stared down at the senator.

The girl before him was dark-haired and sable-eyed, the tilt of her defiant chin so familiar it shattered the universe as Vader knew it.

The boy behind him was sandy-haired and light-eyed, _“I will come with you willingly if you let him live”_ and the genetic stamp of his impulsive generosity splintered Vader’s sense of self.

Both scrawled radiant signatures in the Force, signatures he _knew_ , he’d felt overlapping one another—

_—there were two, not one, did she know? When she came, when she begged me to run away, did she know there were two?—_

— without knowing it a lifetime ago, when he still dreamed of holding them in his arms, of what he would teach them once they were old enough.

He barely heard himself give the order to clear the hangar. Officers and troopers were suddenly scrambling away from him as he focused inwards, on the truth the Force rejoiced in presenting him, weaving the staggering reality through him and around the young pair. Lars – Luke – his son – finished his descent off the ramp and met the princess’s apprehensive gaze, puzzled recognition flowing between them. 

Not Kenobi’s son. _His._ And the girl…he had never paid attention to the banality of politics. Never cared to discover who made up the corrupt and largely useless Imperial Senate. But Vader would know that expression of determined righteousness anywhere. _Hers._

He could hear her voice laughing in his head. _“We’ll have a son who will grow up to be a strong Jedi like his father.”_

_“With a kick like that? It’s a daughter, my love. And she will be as beautiful and eloquent as her mother.”_

_There were two. A boy and girl. Her beloved son and my exquisite daughter._ For a moment on the Death Star’s deck, Anakin Skywalker stood awestruck and mute before the magnificence they had created. 

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His children. _Padmé’s_ children. His _family._ Small wonder the Force sang in their connection. 

____

Vader shoved the weakness of Anakin’s anguished longing aside. They were fortunate that the floundering Jedi had been subsumed by the might of the Sith. Anakin could never have protected these two brilliant stars, did not deserve them, as he had not deserved their mother. But Vader could and did. He had spent two decades building a framework that could now be remolded to defend them. 

____

The fate of the galaxy shifted between one long draw of his respirator and the next. 

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His master had _lied._

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When he had first felt them in space over Tatooine, he had intended to give the Force sensitive on the _Tantive IV_ over to the Emperor as a new Hand. It would have provided a distraction for his master as Vader focused on training the powerful source from his homeworld as his own apprentice to take over the Empire. 

____

Now…the Emperor would never touch another member of his family. Never again. 

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_“You killed her.”_ He remembered Sidious’ false sympathy all too well, and the pocket of anger he had always set aside for Kenobi’s soul-deep betrayal flared, white-hot and searing. He had _not_ killed her. He had certainly wronged her. Were she still with him, he would be on his knees everyday to beg her forgiveness, knowing he could never earn it. But clearly it was not _he_ who was responsible for her death. The proof of that stood before him, their puzzled touch on the Force graced by fear, and in the princess’ case, severe censure. 

____

The fury his old Jedi master set burning in him paled to smoke and ash in the face of a new rage. He could not articulate to himself the ferocity of his anger, nor the protective dimension it carried, but he knew he would slaughter the entire complement aboard the Death Star before he let harm come to either of his children. If his master stood before him now, he would have no difficulty slicing him in half. 

____

“Luke S – Lars,” he dimly heard his son’s slip as the boy introduced himself to his sister. His twin. 

____

“Skywalker,” Vader grated, hearing himself as if from a long distance. “You are Luke Skywalker,” _of course it was Luke, their son was always going to be named Luke, Luke for ‘Morning Light’ in Nubian,_ “son of Anakin Skywalker.” 

____

The boy’s face drained of color under his tan, fear spiking the otherwise bright pattern he wove with the Force. Vader rushed to smother it with the Dark, soothe the boy’s power signature into his own. Beyond a Sith’s constant reach for power, an instinct had kicked in that underwrote his entire existence, banishing the ruthless calculations of advantage a true Dark Lord always weighed. 

____

The boy knew his father’s name, had been taught it was dangerous. And so it was. His master could never learn of his children, or they would be gone. Just as Sidious had taken his beloved wife. 

____

But these two innocents could not know, yet. They shone in the Force before him, leaving him space to be humbled by their raw potential, untouched by the Dark, unmuted by the teachings of the Jedi. If he acted in haste…they would retreat from him. The princess – his _daughter_ – had been aboard a Rebel vessel. Any Rebel knew to expect little mercy from his hands. Even so, her ringing defiance seared the Force, muting anything else she might be feeling, including hatred or fear. And the boy – his _son_ – had offered himself to an enemy to save a friend. While he might dislike Vader less, he was certainly not at ease. Hardly the time for family announcements. 

____

But there would be time. Time to revel in the Force all three could bathe in. Time to train his children, to teach them the raw strength of bending the galaxy to their will. Time to overthrow the master who had lied to him, who had kept not one child but two from him for nearly twenty years. Time to ensure that these two would not be forever scarred as Vader himself had been at the hands of either Jedi or Sith. 

____

“Come,” he commanded, and turned back up the ramp to his shuttle. Behind him, he felt their tense, resistant surprise. 

____

Without turning he connected with both minds. The ease of treading those paths confirmed what he already knew. Even with his prodigious skills, he’d never found connecting with other intellects this…instinctive. Even when the Dark shied from their radiance, Vader breathed his discomfort, feeding it to the Force, and solidified the road into each of his children’s minds. _The name Skywalker is not safe here, he told them._

____

He felt the impact of his mental intrusion as a mixture of revulsion, horror, intrigue…and the same curiosity that proved to be every Jedi’s undoing vibrated back to him along the bonds he’d just activated. 

____

The last quivering thread was reluctant compliance. One half of his mouth quirked upwards as he heard them follow him aboard. 

____

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! I have another short work I'm in the midst of writing for this series as well, and hopefully it will be ready for posting soon.

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter Two will be up next week. Thank you for reading!


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